By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Coinbase said Thursday it had expanded its product to several European countries and overseas territories, including Lithuania, Iceland, Andorra, Gibraltar, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
Zeeshan Feroz, Coinbase’s U.K. CEO, said the firm looks for markets that are “close to or within jurisdictions that we operate in today” when it decides on new expansions. The company recently opened a new office in Dublin, as part of a contingency plan to continue to have access to the bloc post-Brexit.
Some of the markets Coinbase is expanding into are becoming increasingly popular destinations for cryptocurrency and blockchain-related start-ups. The company was able to participate in a total of 33 countries and help people to buy and sell crypto assets in these countries. Now, Coinbase has added six European markets in the following regions: Andorra, Gibraltar, Iceland, Lithuania, Isle of Man and Guernsey.
Today, we’re taking another stride toward realizing our mission of creating an open financial system for the world by announcing the rollout of Coinbase to 6 additional markets around the world. Learn more here: https://t.co/A07HxXmqn1
It's Day 11 of 12 Days of Coinbase. pic.twitter.com/n235o22uyn
— Coinbase (@coinbase) December 20, 2018
Gibraltar is, for example pretty interesting because it has a domestic licensing process for such firms to become registered blockchain technology providers. Iceland, however, has become a popular hub for so-called cryptocurrency mining due to an abundance of renewable energy.
Feroz said:
“I think you can expect a more aggressive approach to us adding more countries in the coming months. Much of what we’re doing here is driven by customer needs and what we’re seeing in the market.”
Bitcoin has fallen nearly 80 percent since its record high in December last year. The world’s most valuable virtual currency was trading above $4,000 on Thursday for the first time in two weeks.
Feroz added:
“I think if you look at last year, a lot of the focus was on people who bought crypto from an investment point of view and a lot of projects raised a ludicrous amount of money as a result of that.”
In Coinbase they confirmed that the new customers in these markets will be able to make full use of Coinbase.com and their iOS and Android apps, allowing them to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on the Coinbase platform for the very first time. They said they are hoping to make Coinbase Pro and Prime available in these regions over time.
Coinbase Believe That Crypto is “Without Borders”
Just this week, Coinbase was able to put new assets on the exchange. These were mostly ERC20 Ethereum-based tokens and they were not added to all the jurisdictions of the company until now. These new assets include Golem (GNT), Maker (MKR), DAI and Zilliqa (ZIL).
Before that, they launched 0x (ZRX), Basic Attention Token (BAT), and their stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC) across all Coinbase platforms, they also added Civic (CVC), district0x (DNT), Loom Network (LOOM) and Decentraland (MANA) to Coinbase Pro.
The exchange then said:
“Our decision to add ERC20 tokens first is based on the relative ease of integrating the standard with our existing infrastructure, particularly from a security standpoint.”
They also announced that next year they will continue expanding rapidly into new regions and adding assets to the Coinbase platform to meet customer demand.
Two weeks ago they said they are continuing to explore the addition of new assets. This work also includes close cooperation with regulators and banks in order to make these new cryptocurrencies available for Coinbase customers in as many jurisdictions as possible.
The company has also published the list of 31 potential new additions which includes among others the above-mentioned XRP, EOS, Cardano (ADA), NEO and Tezos (XTZ).
Nevertheless, the company warns that there is no any guarantee that all the cryptocurrencies included into this list will be added to the platform. Such a situation is explained by the fact that some restrictions could be imposed on concrete coins or they could be not listed due to the results of their evaluation. Some cryptocurrencies may become available only in particular jurisdictions.